Top 10s + Art and design | The Guardianhttps://www.theguardian.com/books/series/toptens+art
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Top 10 books about the 1970shttps://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/nov/05/top-10-books-about-the-1970s
<p>Jimmy Carter’s energy policy, stadium rock, the death of Mao, fall of the Shah, The Sweeney and Roy of the Rovers feature as hot topics among Ian Plenderleith’s recommended reads</p><p>The 1970s have been much reviled and much revived, as Andy Beckett – author of the excellent <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/books/2010/jan/31/lights-went-out-andy-beckett">When the Lights Went Out</a> (Faber) – put it so well. <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/books/2009/sep/06/strange-days-indeed-francis-wheen">Francis Wheen’s Strange Days Indeed</a> (Fourth Estate) and <a href="http://bookshop.theguardian.com/crisis-what-crisis.html">Alwyn Turner’s Crisis? What Crisis?</a> (Aurum Press) are also worth picking up. All approach their political and social studies of the 70s with wit and balance. Yet there were subcultural and political phenomena of the 70s meriting their own books. The music, art, fashion and design worlds were all mutating, in their own important ways, as the first arenas of tolerance. Gays, blacks and women were better accepted, setting the trend for subsequent wider progress. In sport and television, not so much.</p><p>That’s one reason why the 70s were such a fascinating era for football. It was still a sport largely watched by working-class males, but was suffering a decline in interest, thanks to violence, poor stadiums, and negative tactics. Racism and macho culture were endemic. In my book Rock’n’Roll Soccer, I examine how the <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/football/nasl-north-american-soccer-league">North American Soccer League</a> (NASL) briefly gave the global game a much-needed kick in the backside, aiming to entertain fans, not alienate them, and cheerfully bending the sacred laws of the sport while encouraging flair and self-expression.</p> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/nov/05/top-10-books-about-the-1970s">Continue reading...</a>CultureArtArt and designJimmy CarterUS newsChinaAsia PacificWorld newsTelevisionFootballCricketWest Indies cricket teamIranHistoryArt and designSport and leisurePoliticsTV and radio booksNASLWed, 05 Nov 2014 12:54:46 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/nov/05/top-10-books-about-the-1970sPhotograph: Neal Preston/CorbisSo long, flower power … Led Zeppelin on stage in San Francisco, June 1973. Photograph: Neal Preston/CorbisPhotograph: Neal Preston/CorbisSo long, flower power … Led Zeppelin on stage in San Francisco, June 1973. Photograph: Neal Preston/CorbisIan Plenderleith2014-11-05T12:54:46ZRachel Kushner's top 10 books about 1970s arthttps://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/jul/24/rachel-kushner-top-10-books-1970s-art
The novelist picks out the best ways to discover a lost era of freewheeling invention and conceptual rigour<p>I have selected 10 of the many incredible books about art in the 1970s that were piled around my desk like a miniature city as I wrote my most recent novel, The Flamethrowers. They were books I'd collected over the last two decades or so and had looked at many, many times, read many times (some of them collections of essays, others, full colour-plate monographs). The 1970s were a time of freewheeling ideas but also conceptual rigour: art outside the studio, in the form of a dance, a dare, a gesture, a practical joke.</p><p>In trying to narrate a novel through the eyes of a very young woman encountering the world of downtown New York in 1975, I looked, and then looked again, to see with freshness, what my narrator might have seen of a freer, grittier, uniquely inspired era in downtown New York City, when Gordon Matta-Clark sawed a house in half, Tehching Hsieh punched a time clock on the hour every hour 24 hours a day for a year, and Lee Lozano stopped speaking to women as a minor art project that ended up lasting the rest of her life. </p> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/jul/24/rachel-kushner-top-10-books-1970s-art">Continue reading...</a>Art and designBooksArtArt and designAndy WarholDon DeLilloWed, 24 Jul 2013 16:01:00 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/jul/24/rachel-kushner-top-10-books-1970s-artPhotograph: George Steinmetz/CorbisRobert Smithson's benchmark 1970 'earthwork', Spiral Jetty. A 1,500ft spiral made of 6,650 tons of black basalt, it is located on, and most of the time beneath, a Utah salt lake. Photograph: George Steinmetz/CorbisPhotograph: George Steinmetz/CorbisRobert Smithson's benchmark 1970 'earthwork', Spiral Jetty. A 1,500ft spiral made of 6,650 tons of black basalt, it is located on, and most of the time beneath, a Utah salt lake. Photograph: George Steinmetz/CorbisRachel Kushner2013-07-24T16:01:00ZSara Maitland's top 10 books of the foresthttps://www.theguardian.com/books/2012/nov/14/sara-maitland-top-10-books-forests
From the Brothers Grimm to Henry Thoreau, author Sara Maitland delves among the tangled roots of an ancient literary fascination<p>About four years ago I realised that ancient woodland gives me the same frisson of terror and delight that traditional fairy stories do. A remarkable number of people seem to share this feeling. I wanted to work out what was going on, so I went into the woods and revisited the old fairytales – especially those by the Brothers Grimm. And what became clear to me was that the stories were imaginatively rooted in our northern-European origins as people of the forest.</p><p>But it was all so complicated and entangled that I had to write a hybrid book about it: history and photographs and nature and politics and science and anthropology and fiction (my own retellings of 12 Grimm stories) and, indeed, gossip. Inevitably, therefore, my list of 10 – perhaps not best, but "best loved" – forest books is a hybrid too; as much a mixture of fact and fiction as the woods and the fairy stories and my book are. The list begins with childhood and goes on from there.</p> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2012/nov/14/sara-maitland-top-10-books-forests">Continue reading...</a>FictionFairytalesMaurice SendakChildren and teenagersArt and designScience and natureWilliam ShakespeareBooksCultureWed, 14 Nov 2012 15:08:31 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/books/2012/nov/14/sara-maitland-top-10-books-forestsPhotograph: Interfoto/AlamyInto the woods ... a Julius Diez illustration for the Brothers Grimm fairytale Sleeping Beauty. Photograph: Interfoto/AlamyPhotograph: Interfoto/AlamyInto the woods ... a Julius Diez illustration for the Brothers Grimm fairytale Sleeping Beauty. Photograph: Interfoto/AlamySara Maitland2012-11-14T15:08:31ZPatrick Keiller's 10 favourite books with pictureshttps://www.theguardian.com/books/2012/aug/29/patrick-keiller-favourite-books-with-pictures
From Beatrix Potter to WG Sebald, the artist and film-maker chooses books whose images are intrinsic to the work<p>Many publishers find it difficult to include visual material in books. Among the exceptions are Tate Publishing, which recently published <a href="http://shop.tate.org.uk/artist-books-signed+limited-editions/the-possibility-of-lifes-survival-on-the-planet/invt/12553/" title="">The Possibility of Life's Survival on the Planet</a>, a short book to accompany an exhibition The Robinson Institute, at Tate Britain, which includes 71 images, nearly all colour, and Reaktion Books, who published <a href="http://www.reaktionbooks.co.uk/book.html?id=203" title="">Robinson in Space</a>, with 217 colour images, in 1999. Here are 10 books that combine images and text, in the order in which I encountered them.</p> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2012/aug/29/patrick-keiller-favourite-books-with-pictures">Continue reading...</a>BooksCultureFictionArt and designArt and designArchitectureLaurence SterneWG SebaldRobert Louis StevensonBeatrix PotterWed, 29 Aug 2012 14:29:00 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/books/2012/aug/29/patrick-keiller-favourite-books-with-picturesPhotograph: PREvery picture ... an image from The Possibility of Life's Survival on the PlanetPhotograph: PREvery picture ... an image from The Possibility of Life's Survival on the PlanetPatrick Keiller2012-08-29T14:29:00ZMichael Bracewell's top 10 art bookshttps://www.theguardian.com/books/2012/jun/06/michael-bracewell-top-10-art-books
From the biography of a Warhol superstar to a set of dialogues with Duchamp, here are 10 indispensable visual art works<p>The literature on visual art is vast, covers all genres and ranges in quality from the life-changing to the unreadable. In my experience, some of the most eloquent writing on both artistic practice and the history of art is also the most indirect – an example being the oral biography of Warhol "superstar" Edie Sedgwick, listed below.</p><p>How to transpose into a literary form an experience that is rooted in the visual has presented a rich opportunity for both writers and visual artists. The following selection is listed in no particular order.</p> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2012/jun/06/michael-bracewell-top-10-art-books">Continue reading...</a>Art and designBooksArtArt and designAndy WarholMarcel DuchampRichard HamiltonCultureWed, 06 Jun 2012 10:35:15 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/books/2012/jun/06/michael-bracewell-top-10-art-booksPhotograph: Robin Platzer/Twin Images/Getty ImagesFame academy … Andy Warhol in New York in 1981. Photograph: Robin Platzer/Twin Images/Getty ImagesPhotograph: Robin Platzer/Twin Images/Getty ImagesFame academy … Andy Warhol in New York in 1981. Photograph: Robin Platzer/Twin Images/Getty ImagesMichael Bracewell2012-06-06T10:35:15ZPatrick Cramsie's top 10 graphic design bookshttps://www.theguardian.com/books/2010/aug/04/top-10-graphic-design-books
From the extraordinary visual dexterity of Alan Fletcher to Jan Tschichold's experiments with typography, Patrick Cramsie picks the books that have shaped our visual culture<p>Patrick Cramsie studied graphic design at London's Middlesex University before going on to work in an Anglo-Japanese design company and then later as a freelance designer. His design work has centred on corporate identity and book design, but alongside this he has written book reviews for the Times Literary Supplement and Tate Etc. His latest book, The Story of Graphic Design, covers 5,500 years of cultural history from the invention of writing to the birth of digital design.</p><p>"We live in a world of signs and symbols. Street signs, logos, labels, pictures and words in books, newspapers, magazines and now on our mobiles and computer screens; all these graphic shapes have been designed. They are so commonplace we seldom think of them as a single entity, "graphic design". Yet taken as a whole they are central to our modern way of life.&nbsp; Nearly all of these books on graphic design appeal as much to the eye as to the mind, being beautiful as well as useful. In some, this marriage is so complete that they stand as archetypes of their medium; as specimens of perfection in book form."</p> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2010/aug/04/top-10-graphic-design-books">Continue reading...</a>BooksDesignArt and designArt and designCultureGraphic designWed, 04 Aug 2010 12:09:46 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/books/2010/aug/04/top-10-graphic-design-booksPhotograph: PhaidonArt of seeing ... Alan Fletcher's The Art of Looking Sideways. Photograph: PhaidonPhotograph: PhaidonArt of seeing ... Alan Fletcher's The Art of Looking Sideways. Photograph: PhaidonPatrick Cramsie2010-08-04T12:09:46Z